


Head in the Clouds

by lilacsigil



Category: Excalibur - Fandom, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-08
Updated: 2010-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ororo needs to be outside where she can think, not stuck in this stuffy room with a visitor from Britain. (Set after X1)</p><p>Specific request: In the aftermath of the events of the first movie, Britain's mutant team (Excalibur or MI-13, your choice) contacts the X-Men to find out more about the Magneto situation, and also to compare notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head in the Clouds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iambic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/gifts).



Ororo stood by the window, her arms folded and leather jacket creaking at the elbows. She was getting suspicious of all these strange people at the school. First Logan – though, admittedly, she and Scott had brought him here – then Mystique's break-in, and now this very British visitor. She knew it was wrong to presume that two people knew each other just because they had similar accents, but their excess politeness and delicate grasp on the teacups was really not helping.

"Actually, Professor, I'm looking for my sister."

Professor Xavier nodded politely. "My apologies, Mr Braddock, but I'm not entirely sure why you think I might know of your sister's whereabouts."

Brian Braddock was a sizeable man, and took up a great deal of space in the Professor's study. Nonetheless, he was also well-spoken and calm, and Ororo felt no particular threat from him. Of course, if he did mean harm, the Professor would be able to tell. She wasn't entirely sure why the Professor wanted her here at all, and the sunlight she could feel warming her back through the window wasn't helping her concentration. She should be outside, getting things done, not locked in here ignoring her cup of tea.

She leaned forward. "Mr Braddock, if you want help, we need more information."

"Of course. Her name is Elizabeth." He took a USB stick from his pocket. "I've put a number of photographs on here."

"The police can't help you track her?" If Braddock was going to dance around the topic of mutants, Ororo wasn't going to offer him anything. Let him be the petitioner and make the first move.

Before he could answer, the Professor smiled. "Ororo, would you mind passing me my computer?"

She kept her eye on Braddock, but went over to the desk and brought the Professor his laptop. It irked Ororo to move away from the table and interrupt what control she had over the situation, even though it would have been awkward for the Professor to manoeuvre his wheelchair past the little tea table and Braddock's bulk. Outside, it was a gently balmy day, but in here the shelves of books and antiques loomed over them all, blocking the sunlight.

The Professor plugged in the USB drive and the virus checker started up.

Braddock turned back to Ororo. "Elizabeth is an adult – my twin, to be exact – so no police force will take a report of a missing person when there's nothing suspicious about her disappearance. I managed to pull a few strings and found out that she'd last used her passport to enter the US."

"Old school tie, eh?"

"Yes, Fettes."

"Oh, excellent. A dear friend of mine attended." The Professor was still calm, but Ororo was getting annoyed now, as if the two men were holding a conversation quite apart from her.

She butted into whatever reminiscences were about to occur. "Mr Braddock, don't you think this is a matter for the police?"

"Ah. Well."

Here it comes, Ororo thought. She looked forward to the day when "mutant" was no longer an embarrassing hitch in conversation, when it was just a casual conversation around the table.

"My sister is a mutant." Braddock at least looked worried rather than shamed. "You understand why I wouldn't go to the US police."

Ororo raised an eyebrow. "But you'd go to the British police?"

Braddock glanced up at her. "Yes, of course. As I said, there wasn't much they can do, but I could be fairly certain that they weren't going to hunt her down and incarcerate her." He cleared his throat. "But I'm sure you're aware of this country's record on human rights, let alone human rights for people they seem to be declaring not human."

"I can hardly argue with that," the Professor replied, and opened the files from the USB stick.

Elizabeth Braddock had the same kind of fresh, open face as her brother, all pale skin and pink cheeks, but her hair was a delicate shade of lavender. It was hard to tell, but Ororo thought her eyes might be purple, too, though she could probably excuse them as blue or grey, depending on the light.

"Does she dye her hair now?" Ororo asked. "There aren't a lot of visible mutants around, so I'd think she wouldn't be too hard to find."

"You don't dye your hair," Braddock pointed out.

"I'm in a safe place right now," she snapped.

The Professor spoke before Braddock could reply. "I'm sorry, but we have no information on your sister. I will certainly ask my contacts within the mutant community, though, in case anyone has seen her. So, you believe she would not alter her appearance?"

Ororo moved towards the window as Braddock talked about his sister's determination to be herself. The man was not particularly offensive – and seemed entirely genuine about his worry over his twin – so why did he make her so edgy? This room was suffocating her, and she couldn't see her way through her own thoughts, let alone the whole situation. The Professor obviously didn't sense anything strange about the man, and, frankly, Ororo wouldn't go to the police for help finding a missing mutant, either. The Professor would get as much information as possible so that he could use Cerebro to try to find the young woman once Braddock had left; it was not the first time that someone had used either the Professor or Jean's public profile to find them and seek out help.

Ororo shook her head. It was always harder to think when she was stuck inside, especially in a stuffy room like this one. She opened the window and took a deep breath of fresh air, and immediately realised what was wrong. The was some kind of subtle disturbance out near the trees – nothing that she could see, but something wrong with the ecosystem of the school, something purposefully swift and human rather than predictably plant-like or meteorological.

"Professor! There's someone else here!" Ororo leapt across the room and placed herself between the Professor and Braddock.

*I sensed nobody – where are they?* the Professor sent. *Should I call the rest of the X-Men?*

*Check they're safe and alert them, then tell them to secure the students,* Ororo sent back. If it was a person, their entwinement with the ecosystem must be baffling the Professor's powers in some way. *Whoever it is, they're outside near the trees, and I don't know who or what their target is.*

Telepathic conversations took but a fraction of a second and Ororo kept her attention firmly on Braddock. She stood over him with the winds at her fingertips, papers spinning around the room. "You're telling the truth about your sister, obviously, but what else is going on, Braddock? Who did you bring with you?"

Braddock was unflustered by Ororo's display of power, which Ororo considered a bad sign. Most people backed up when the weather came at her call. Instead of angry or frightened, he looked mildly confused.

"Well, I came alone – I wasn't sent here, if that's what you were asking. Since I'm here, though, what do you know about the Magneto incident at Liberty Island?" He stood up, but Ororo knew that deliberately intimidating manoeuvre and didn't budge, even though she ended up staring at his chest.

"What do you care about it?" Ororo kept Braddock's focus on her. She could hear the Professor's chair moving backwards, to the comparative safety of his desk, and was suddenly glad that Scott had insisted on training not just the students but the Professor in emergency protocols, no matter how much the Professor had protested.

"Well, at Liberty Island were four British agents, three minor members of royalty, two former ambassadors –"

"And a partridge in a pear tree," Ororo finished for him, convinced now that he was stalling them. If he didn't actually know what was going on out there, he was certainly able to make a good guess and act accordingly. "You're British Intelligence of some kind, aren't you?"

"Of sorts, yes. I am on leave, presently, looking for my sister. I can promise you that I had no other intentions."

*The students are safe with Jean and Cyclops is on his way here. I will restrain Mr Braddock if you wish to search for the intruder.* The Professor's mental voice was tense, a tone rarely heard in his speaking voice.

Braddock froze in place, his mouth open, and Ororo swung herself out the window, letting the winds carry her to the ground. She stretched out her arms and opened herself to all of nature – water, wind, earth, sunlight – letting the disturbance come to her. She might not have felt the anomaly had she been somewhere unfamiliar, but she knew the seasons and the land here like the skin and muscles of her own body. She called down a fine rain, more than enough to expose someone invisible or hiding telepathically, but could see no-one. Ororo let out a long breath, balancing the risk of greater awareness against the risk of being attacked, and let her awareness flow with the gentle rain from cloud to earth, searching for the intruder that she could sense but the Professor could not.

The disturbance was in the earth. Ororo reached out her hand towards it and adopted a defensive posture, rolling the rainclouds into storm clouds.

"I know you're there. Get out."

A patch of grass suddenly heaved and resolved itself into a busty, naked woman who seemed to be made of damp earth and grass, her hair a cascade of tangled wildflowers that Ororo couldn't name.

"I'm sorry," the woman said, her voice merry rather than frightened or aggressive. "I haven't really had time to get used to your earth and plants. I must have stood out like a tree in the middle of a motorway!"

"Not exactly." Ororo remained cautious. The woman's confidence indicated that she didn't fear Ororo in the slightest, which was troubling.

"Is Brian all right? He doesn't know I'm here – it's a surprise! His friends asked me to help him find out about that terrible magnetic disturbance. Do you know anything about it?"

"Why did you break into this school to find out that information if you were just going to ask me?"

"Brian's friends said you might not want to tell me anything, and it's very important. Didn't you feel the ley lines groan?"

Ororo nodded. Something about the woman's openness was disarming, no matter how strongly Ororo tried to maintain her defences. "I don't know anything about 'ley lines' but the weather was disturbed, yes."

"It was very uncomfortable – it reached all the way to Britain! Oh, I'm forgetting my manners. I'm Meggan." She reached out to shake Ororo's hand, and as she did, her body altered from earth and grass to brown flesh, her eyes deep-set and dark, her hair glossy white.

"Stop that!"

Meggan stopped still, her eyes downcast. "I'm so sorry. It's difficult to stay in one form when I'm not concentrating."

Her form shifted again, to a pale woman with pointed ears, wearing a loose green shift. Her hair stayed white, though, and Ororo found the mirroring deeply unnerving – and, from Meggan's expression, she felt the same way.

Ororo touched Meggan's hand. "You don't want to be here, do you? You know that 'Brian's friends' are asking you to do something treacherous."

Meggan nodded, looking close to tears, shrinking in height, her eyes turning black. Ororo didn't know how she could live like that, every emotion so all-consuming that it affected her very body.

"I wanted to help – Brian's sister really is missing, and the magnetic disturbance hurt me. But I don't like this sneaking about. Brian's friends said that I couldn't tell him I would be here, or your Professor would have seen it in Brian's mind immediately. He won't see me – my brain works differently when I'm in different shapes."

Ororo tucked that piece of information away, increasingly angry that someone as innocent as Meggan had been sent as a spy, just because of the nature of her powers. "Brian is fine," Ororo reassured her, and immediately felt terrible when Meggan's eyes widened as if she hadn't realised that Brian might not be. "Come and see for yourself. And then we can talk about Brian's friends and why they can't just ask us, like you can."

Meggan brightened at once, her hair taking on a golden tone and her shape solidifying. "Oh, thank you!" She held her hands out to the sunshine as Ororo rolled the clouds away. "They told me your name was Storm, but I can see that's only part of you."

Ororo smiled and took Meggan's hand as they walked back to the house. "Of course it is. You may call me Ororo."

Meggan laughed and tiny daisies blossomed in her hair, her toes squishing pleasantly in the damp earth as they walked. It took Ororo only a moment to kick off her own shoes and join her – and even if it was Meggan's strange powers colouring her own behaviour, she couldn't feel bad to be in touch with the earth again, just as she was with the sky.


End file.
